print for the press. Many of the night games and uncover some truths - most exteriors were positively illegible, and significant is the fact that Jean-Paul is that does strike one as being patently dying of multiple sclerosis. Blanche unfair to both Carriere and his really has insisted from the outset that she is top-notch DOP. travelling to meet spring, an ongoing, mid-winter obsession that Fabienne Anne Reiter • finds rather annoying. But she capi­ tulates to it after their presence in Con­ trecoeur sets off a chain of emotional events ; the two women strike out on the Jean-Guy Noel's highway again with a sickly Jean-Paul between them. If s possible that Contrecoeur is in- Contrecoeur tendetl to work as a somewhat complex mood piece, but it doesn't, finally ; there's so much dramatic baggage here that you're trying to piece together the plot Jean-Guy Noel's Contrecoeur seems full most of the time. Noel has enlisted the of interesting ideas and totally bereft of CONTRECOEUR d. Jean-Guy NoiSlsc. Jean- some means to pull them together. His Guy NoSI, Gilles Nofel d.o.p. Francois Beauchemin tale of three misfits who band together s.d. Jean Rival ed. Marthe de la CheviY3tiet^ p. for a trip to a small Quebec town follows man. Michel Belaieff. Luc Lamy Ist a.d. Jacques a more or less conventional narrative, Wilbrod Benoit loc. man. Francine Forest arL des. vianney Gauthier cost. des. Johanne PregenI and then doesn't resolve it: that's by no make-up Diane Simard cont. Marie La Haye 1st means a cardinal sin, but Contrecoeur asst cam. Louis de Emsted. Michel Bissonnette, doesn't seem sure of its own intentions Robert Vanherweghem 3nd asst. cam. Daniel and ends up confusing the spectator. Jobin asst. sd. Marcel Fraser boom Michel Charron asst. art. d. Claude Pare props Charles Bernier • Today's angry young man for all seasons: Pierre Curzi as Lucien Brouillard That's a flat-out problem. stills Anne de Guise gaffer Jacques Paquet best The story follows Blanche (Monique boy Daniel Chretien, Richer Francoeur key grip Mercure) and Fabienne (AnoukSimard) Michel Chohin grip Jean Trudeau, Marc de Ernsted p. assts. Nathalie Moliavko-Visotzky, Roljert La­ beginning because he believes so badly. as they make plans to visit the town of pierre p. sec. Estelle Lemieux sd. ed. Marcel Bruno Carriere's Curzi is the centre of the movie, and he Contrecoeur where they've left behind Pothier assL ed. Yves Chaput, Paul Dion mixer holds it with Absolute conviction. Strong some fairly complex family ties. Theo Michel Charron neg. cutter Carole Gagnon titles support, as always, is offered by Tifo as (Maurice Podbrey) is Fabienne's father Madeleine Leduc legal Andre Thauvette music Lucien Brouillard Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, Offenbach lab. Les the madonna-faced Alice, and Blay as and Blanche's ex-husband, while the Laboratoires de Film Quebec T616montage, Belte- the rather complex Martineau, whose alcoholic Roger (Gilbert Sicotte) is vue Pathe Lp. Monique Mercure, Anouk Simard, conflicting emotions are finally mangled Fabienne's ex-husband and Blanche's Raymond Cloutier, Gilbert Sicotte, Maurice Pod­ somewhat by the awkward climax. son. The two women take Fabienne's brey, Claude Maher, Frangoise Berd, Michel Forget, Fernand Gignac, Louise Saint-Pierre p. Pierre Lamy Bruno Carriere's first dramatic feature Whafs beautifully evoked here is boyfriend Jean-Paul up on his offer to p.c. Les Productions Pierre Lamy Itee, with assis­ jumps a fair number of hurdles on sheer Quebec's passionate political edge, the drive them to Contrecoeur in his oil tance from the CFDC, rinstitul queb^cois du cine­ energy of intention. This character study way people tend to commit themselves tanker; during a long snowbound night ma, Radio-Quebec, Les Cinemas Unis color 35mm cum political thriller is at times both with Lucien's brand of "all or nothing" on the highway, the three play power running time 95 min. overly ambitious and a little muddled, dedication. The film weaves that passion but that never seems to dull its spirit. into a classic tale of exploiter versus Carrifere displays an instinct for canny exploited with a kind of gentle grace, casting and solid film craft, both of something that remains undefeated which combine to pull him over some with the pitch for dramatic intrigue at tough dramatic terrain. the end. Carriere is a convincing direc­ Lucien Brouillard is mostly about the tor of both actors and narrative, and he's confrontation between personal ambi­ packaged the movie with clean, unpre­ tion and self-sacrifice, but it gleans both tentious technique. But there is a sour texture and tone from its setting. Lucien note here. As to how the camerawork of (Pierre Curzi) is a kind of self-styled the extraordinary Pierre Mignot mea­ social agitator, a one-man crusade sures up, I'm hard-pressed to say: the against injustice whose gestures of distributors opted to meet a tight release protest often land him in trouble. His date by screening a badly-timed test legal net is provided by childhood friend Jacques Martineau (Roger Blay), a well- LUCIEN BROUILLARD d. Bruno Car placed lawyer with visions of ascension riere sc. Jacques Jacob, Jacques Paris, Bruno Car­ riere dialog. Louis Saia d.o.p. Pierre Mignot art d. into Quebec's ruling class. Just how Gilles Aird sd. Serge Beauchemin ed. Michel Arcand much of a liability Lucien will prove to mus. Yves Laferriere 1st a.d. Ginette Breton 2nd him is something Lucien's wife Alice a.d. Robert Martel 3rd a.d. Claude Cartler conti­ (Marie Tifo) sees more clearly than her nuity Ginette Senecai loc. man. Suzanne Girard p. assts. Jean-Pierre Laurendeau, Marie Potvin, Ronald husband. When the reactionary premier Guevremont p. sec. Suzanne Comtois admin. Provencher (Jean Duceppe) blocks Mar- Bernadette Payeur, B^rangere Maltais p. man. tineau's political ambitions, the lawyer Rene Gueissaz 1st asst. cam. Jean Leplne trainee hatches a plot to rid himself of two road­ Christiane Guemon add. cam. Serge Giguere, Bruno Carriere stills Bertrand Carrifere boom Yvon Benoit blocks at once; political double-dealing assL ed. No^l Almey sd. ed. Paul Dion asst. sd. ed. and assassination suddenly hijack the Michel Charron props Marc Corriveau asst. movie. props Philippe Chevalier dec. Maurice Leblanc painter Guy Saint-Georges make-up Micheline If s that twist of melodrama that really Foisy hair Bob Pritchett cost. des. Mich^le Hamel throws the spanner in the works here, dresser Martina Fontaine lighting Daniel Chretien but the calibre of performance and the elec. Robert Lapierre Jr, Jacques Girard, Denis Menard key grip Michel Chouin musicians Robert particulars of place and character pretty Lachapelle, Richard Perrotle, Robert Stanley sd. much redeem the imbalance. Pierre efx. Terry Burke mixer Michel Charron titles Curzi is marvellous as a working-class Michel Laroche animation Film Docteur du Qu^ Quebecer whose battle for right is finally bee Inc. archives Pascal Gelinas, Ateliers Audio- Visueis du Quebec Inc. opticals Antoine Desilel, self-destructive. There's something very Pierre G. Verge, Michel Delisle I.p. Pierre Curzi, childlike about Lucien, and Curzi cap­ Roger Blay, Marie Tifo, Paul Savoie, Jean Duceppe, tures it perfectly with that lopsided grin Germain Houde lab. Bellevue-Path6 Quebec (1972) It6e, Film Opticals IQuebecl Itee, Negt)ec Inc. equip­ of his and wonderfully articulate body ment rental Panavision Canada Itee assoc p. language. His courting of Alice, his angry Marc Daigle exec. p. Rene Gueissaz p.c. 1'Associa­ disbelief at a crooked legal system and tion cooperative de productions audio-visuelles his naive trust in Martineau's inten­ lACPAV), the CFDC, Bellevue-PathS Quebec 119721 Ltd., Famous Players Ltd. and Soci^t^ Radio-Canada tions are what give Lucien his sad-eyed colour 35mm running time 89 min., 1983 grace : he's set up for a crash from the

May 1983-Cinema Canada/43 REVIEMi help of a strong, engaging cast, and they able good fortune to have as its chair­ shown on the phone (12 hours a day, we mere mortals : such as Bill MulhoUand's are an intriguing group to watch - a man a man whose deceptive avuncular- are told) steering the Canadian Big Four office, limousine or horse; bankers in notable exception is Maurice Podbrey, ity conceals a power so secure that he banks into a loan-consortium with the twosomes, threesomes or whole rooms- whose obvious unease with the camera was able to commission his own NFB- Canadian government to bail out Dome ; ful, millionaires and moneymen by the worsens an already difficult role. CBC self-portrait and have it executed the Mexican finance minister reveals to pound, franc or mark. This may be of Noel has adopted a kind of art film' by that modern-day artistic wretch, the MulhoUand, one month before the news great interest on some level, but does approach to his narrative, with long documentary freelance. Let there be no became public, that Mexico is broke, but showing ordinary images of bankers closeups of blinking truck lights and the mistake about it: Prisoners of Debt is the film cannot go beyond the external really tell us anything about banking? like, but it doesn't clarify his purpose or William MulhoUand's film : it is about behaviour of bankers' conventional res­ Prisoners of Debt repeatedly makes theme. The film is far from incompetent; him, his bank, and the people who work pectability because that is all there is to the point that the summer of 1982 was a it's just bemusing in a kind of "whafs for him ; in a word, his world, the world see. time of grave financial crisis. Yet the one going on and why should I care" way of the Sum King that would be revealed What it meant, of course, was vastly central question the film never clarifies that tends to confuse and ultimately for the first time to Peter Raymont and different: in Canada, to take but one is : for whom ? In one scene MulhoUand alienate. You don't know what you're his camera-crew. No public relations example, the Dome bail-out effectively and the Bank of Montreal's chief ac­ supposed to think, film would have dared supply what destroyed the National Energy Policy as countant are standing before an elec­ Raymont does happily : the gross his­ the market - represented by the banks - tronic ticker-tape as the Canadian dollar Anne Reiter • torical flattery, the parallels to Cosimo taught a hard lesson in high finance to plummets below 78 cents U.S. How far de Medici, the monumental loftiness of the amateurs in the Canadian govern­ will it drop? MulhoUand is asked. the view from the top of First Canadian ment. There's a wonderfully brief scene Shrug, grin, "Who knows ?" In another Peter Raymont's Place. in Prisoners of Debt, that goes complete­ scene MulhoUand admits that had not a Yet less than one year ago - in the ly unexplained, where MulhoUand last-minute deal been worked out be­ Prisoners of Debt summer of'82 when much of Prisoners patronizingly pats "Red" Ed Clark, who tween Dome, the three other banks and of Debt is set - the reversing of mone­ designed the NEP, on the shoulder, the Canadian government, the Bank of tary policies from inflationary to defla­ having just - as the old expression goes- Montreal would have pulled theplugon Inside the Global tionary sent powerful aftershocks pocketed Clark's balls. Dome - the papers were drawn up ~ a through the international capitalist sys­ But that would be another film al­ move which supposedly would have Banking Crisis tem and pushed unemployment in the together, another film which would caused a major financial collapse. But- developed world up to the 60 million contain interview footage with Canadian and this is vital- that collapse would not range. The price of oil dropped and with journalist Walter Stewart who does have been the bank's. it fell banks (in the U.S. and later in the know a thing or two about Canadian Raymont and Collison gently wonder Mideast), national economies teetered banks, instead of, as Prisoners of Debt in Prisoners of Debt whether the banks on the brink of bankruptcy (Poland, does, having interviews with American in having financed the boom in the first Mexico, and to a lesser degree Venezuela Martin Mayer and Britisher Anthony place thoughtlessly risked a catastrophic It is necessarily a part of the business and Nigeria), and companies like Cana­ Sampson who may know much about bust. In the film the bankers defend of a banker to maintain appearances da's Dome Petroleum found themselves the U.S. and U.K. banking systems res­ themselves with the familiar "We only and to profess a conventional res­ unable to repay the interest on their pectively but less about Canada's. give the people what they want." Mul­ pectability which is more than gigantic loans. All this Prisoners of Debt To be sure. Prisoners of Debt shows hoUand more candidly says that basic­ human. It is so much their stock-in- shows yet doesn't show. MulhoUand is us many things never before seen by ally nobody knows whafs really going trade that their position should not on until a crisis hits. be questioned, that they do not even Conspiratorially charming chairman : William D. MulhoUand of the Bank of Montreal Instead, let's all go horse-riding; have question it themselves until it is too fun while you can ; it could all collapse late. Like the honest citizens they at the drop of a hat. In banking as in are, they feel a proper indignation at history, it comes and it goes. From the the perils of the wicked world in 54th floor, all is mere transcience and which they live - when the perils vanity. mature; but they do not foresee Fine sentiments indeed, and Raymont them. A Bankers' conspiracy! The and crew got a nice trip to Florence to idea is absurd! I only wish there illustrate this. But - and this is a point were one I the film does not make - in the end, as John Maynard Keynes someone like MulhoUand well knows, it is not the banks that are the prisoners of The great virtue of Peter Raymonfs debt: it is the national governments and Prisoners of Debt: Inside the Global even more so their hostage populations Banking Crisis, the hour-long National whose blood, sweat and tears will pay Board-CBC documentary co-production which the CBC aired March 29, is that it for the errors of the governments and so utterly confirms the correctness of the banks. One wishes Raymont and J.M. Keynes' observation. The conven­ Collison had paid somewhat more tional respectability, the lack of ques­ attention to this enduring aspect of the tioning, the smugness of proper indigna­ banking situation. tion ; it's all there. Unfortunately, that's Instead Prisoners of Debt gives us the all that s there, and thaf s the problem. smug philosophy of the Marie-Antoinettes In the '20s and '30s, the imagery of the of finance capital. Citicorp's Walter previous worldwide banking crisis was, Wriston complains that, whatever he at the very least, dramatic. Bankers leapt does, the banker gets blamed; like the from the tops of tall buildings as banks filmmaker, he adds slyly. In that per­ went bankrupt and money literally dis­ spective, when bankers and filmmakers appeared. But in today's planned get together on a film, one is justifiably Depression, with its pockets of social suspicious. misery effectively contained or trans­ Perhaps it all comes down to this, ferred to distant developing lands whose which was Keynes' ultimate bit of ad­ problems are too far removed to be vice : that banking is too important to be affecting, the imagery of crisis is simply left to bankers. It follows that Peter not there. Raymonfs Prisoners of Debt proves In the absence of the visually exfra- that films about bankers are still too ordinary, then, the camera eye contents important to be left to filmmakers. At itself with the mundane. The blame for least until proven otherwise. this visual blahdness must rest with Raymont and co-director/writer, finan­ Michael Dorland • cial editor Robert Collison, tempered by the fact that credit is due these two for ha\ ing tackled a highly abstract and in­ PRISONERS OF DEBT: INSIDE ordinately complex subject. And with THE GLOBAL BANKING CRISIS all due respect to Keynes, what may in d. Peter Raymont, Robert Collison sc Robert Collisoii ed. Murray Battle d.o.p. Mark Irwin. C.S.C., Bene the '30s have seemed like the absurd Ohashi add. cam. Martin Duckworth loc. siL notion of a bankers' conspiracy has, by Bryan Day add. loc. sd. Richard Nicol narrator the '80s, given the general rise of Absur­ Peter Raymont sd. ed. Robin Leigh re-rec. Terry dity, become far more probable. As Ray­ Cooke p. John Kramer exec. p. John Spotton monfs film unwittingly proves. produced by National Film Board of Canada, Ontario Region production, in association with the It is the Bank of Montreal's consider­ Canadian Broadcasting Corporation color 16mm screening time 57 min. 35 sec.

44/Cinema Canada- May 1983 with bows and arrows from galloping Colin Low's horses. Pete challenges his oldest son to learn this lost art and prove his mettle. Standing Alone The young man and two friends res­ pond with more enthusiasm than skill as an elder fashions the weapons and explains first principles. They must learn to shoot the animal. Pete attaches bales of hay to his baf tered Chevy pickup and leads them The rolling foothills of southern Alberta through golden fields as they race bare­ conjure up cinematic memories of Hol­ back, trying to hit the moving target. It is lywood cowboys and Indians. But those a visual pun on all our cinematic mem­ are American memories. Here now is a ories of the western film - wild Indians unique Canadian twist (maybe even a in hot pursuit, shooting arrows - only myth in the meiking): how about cow­ these young braves are trying to capture boys who are Indians ? Meet Pete Stand­ a lost tribal art. Once again, Pete serves ing Alone (his real name), a blood Indian as a figurative and literal vehicle of their cowboy, astride his steed. education. He is as happy careening Horses dominate Standing Alone and through the fields as are the adolescents Pete's thoughts about himself, his family striving for their straw target. It is irrele­ and his people. He watches his young vant that we never see whether they children play horsey-back with each actually get their buffalo. They have other and wonders if they will grow up earned dignity. • Victor Davis after setting the world record for 200m breast stroke ignorant of real life on horses when, like And that is the beauty of this film. It so many of his people, they are drawn to commented upon. Rather, we see and does not idealize Indian life, nor does it William Johnston's & feel it through the editing, the composi­ the city. "Keeping anything of the old reflect the white man's fixation with ways is more difficult all the time," he tions within the frame, the nature of the contemporary Indian social disintegra­ Ira Levy's conversations and body language be­ remarks philosophically. For time is the tion. The film insists quietly that social real protagonist in this eloquent blend tween the individuals. I may be wrong cohesion exists (with its share of contrt> The Fast and using this particular example, but my of ethnographic and lyrical documen­ versy and strife, to be sure) as does an tary from the National Film Board. point is that The Fast And The Furious honourable Indian way of doing things. works so well at the level of unfolding Pete Standing Alone last appeared on A touching moment occurs when Pete the Furious action and imagery that its verbal con­ film 22 years ago as a young buck on talks to a white archaeologist who has tent recedes. In fact, although I am quite motorcycle in the NFB's classic Indian found an Indian fingerbone in a 5000- aware that this film includes a scripted film, Circle of the Sun. Producer Tom year-old stone cairn he has opened. Pete narration delivered by R.H. Thomson, I Daly and director Colin Low showed balances the4)one atop his own finger, The Fast And The Furious is a wonderful have little recollection of its use. The him then with feet in two worlds, un­ matching it perfectly. He has touched an documentary about two Canadian voice-over narration, so standard in tra­ certain in each. A generation later, Pete Indian past older than the Pyramids. world-class swimmers : Alex Baumann ditional Canadian documentary, is here ruminates about how time has brought As the film ends, a solitary Pete stands and Victor Davis, members of the Cana­ so well integrated with imagery and accidents and death, "the things you in a snowy field with his horses. A wild dian National Swim Team. Not only music that it becomes an unobtrusive, cannot control. It changes you." His con­ stallion has come down from the hills, does the film personalize these two ethereal guide. This seems to be one of victions have changed too. probably to feed with the mares on names from the sports pages, it reveals several ways in which the film tran­ Now he confirms his identity and Pete's hay. He reaches out with gloved the drama of their lives and training scends its category as documentary. strength through tribal custom. And it fingers to touch the normally reluctant efforts leading up to the Ecuador World In the sequences devoted to the races means more than paying Up service to a stallion. Against all odds, the wild horse Championships and the Commonwealth at the Ecuador World Championships near-forgotten ethos. No longer afraid to lets Pete touch him. Pete concludes that Games in Australia. The film is so intense and the Commonwealth Games in Aus­ chant or dance, he has become a bridge,- ' Indians, like horses, are survivors and involvingthat its real-life drama, for tralia, the filmmakers intercut film and reaching back to an oral tradition some against the odds. Nor can we forget an me, outclasses the slick and scripted video images. The economics of shooting 5000 years old and forward to the next earlier truism Pete stated about the art efforts of a Rocky I, II, or III. dictated a one-camera setup, which generation. of breaking horses - if a man spoils a While watching the film, it's hard to proved insufficient for covering the Pete speaks of change, the most con­ horse, he calls the horse no good. remember that these two athletes are races fully. When projected on the larger stant factor in life, while we behold the Daly and Low, two senior and eminent just teenagers: Canadian kids from screen, the differences in quality of the horse herd as counterpoint against a masters of documentary at the Film ordinary Canadian towns - Baumann two media were apparent, but not dis­ panorama of the rolling verdure of Board, have not lost any artistic skill or from Sudbury, Davis from Guelph. tracting. In fact, the effect was interesting southern Alberta. This is part of an un­ deftness with time. In all probability Through the story of their individual and seemed to add a dimension of changing cycle. Pete gallops alongside Standing Alone would not have been efforts to win, they take on heroic pro­ meaning on its own. I suspect that on them in classic cowboy pose, remini­ attempted by commercial interests portions. If s also difficult to remember television the discrepancy would not scent of the lyricism of the cowboy on because it takes so much time and that you're watching a documentary. be as readily noticeable horseback in Corral, another Low and money to use the camera as a cultural The Fast And The Furious unfolds like Daly masterpiece (1954). The lyricism is The film makes liberal use of slow- mirror. The CBC has purchased it and classic drama, with a building of tension motion footage during all swimming still there, but now a cowboy Indian soon Canadians may see how worth- and conflict, the pitting of the hero speaks. sequences. This technique enhances whille the effort has been. against an adversary, and in the denoue­ the grace of movement and highlights His voice-over narration adds a special More significantly, Standing Alone ment, the final test of the hero's mettle. the beauty of the body, but becomes complexion to the film because it seems may stimulate Native people to seize The filmmakers have achieved a remark­ repetitious and predictable. Moreover, so natural. This is not the tired docu­ hold of their own destinies, to do some­ able fusion of documentary and drama, its emphasis results in the fact that there mentary method of reading someone thing with their own lives and do so on quite different from docudrama in that are only a few moments when we see else's words about the images. In a their own terms. And that may be worth there are no actors and life itself cannot the swimmers actually racing at full painstaking process (an original docu­ more than a dozen funded programmes. be scripted. But by involving us in these speed. On the other hand, this rarity mentary method pioneered in the '30s) two people and their sport, we care makes those few moments astounding. Daly and Low showed Pete the hours of Gary Evans • deeply about the outcome. The film­ rushes which had been shot off and on makers pull out all the stops in heighten­ The Fast And The Furious must reach over the previous two years. They took ing the dramatic tension. a wide audience - it is that good. The film has already been shown on Radio- copious notes or recorded what Pete STANDING ALONE d. Colin Low p./ed. Interestingly, directors Johnston and said. Then they wrote the documentary Tom Daly project organizer John Spotton d.o.p. Canada and CBC, and wiU be scheduled Douglas Kiefer, Ernest McNabb assL cam. Ian Levy seem to have allowed much of the for a repeat. Watch for it. This film may with Pete and made his phrases fit the film's "information" to emerge subtly, picture with apparent effortlessness. Elkin, Rodney Gibbons, Simon Leblanc loc. rec. become a landmark in Canadian docu­ Bev Davidson, Claude Hazanavicius sd. ed. John without overt comment. We learn quite mentary. Pete Standing Alone wants his children Knight orlg. mus. Cldon Rathburn re-rec Roger a lot about the sport of swimming, the to get a taste of the earth where animal Lamoureux exec. p. Barrie Howells, Michael Scott necessary training, the arena of world- prod. & dist. National Film Board of Canada color Joyce Nelson • and man interplay. It is hard to find that 16mm running time 57 min. 50 sec. class competition, the procedures for genuine combination; even at rodeos races, etc., but much of this information today where most of the cowboys are In­ comes through at a non-verbal level. dians, the bucking broncs and steers are THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS That is, we grasp the essentials of this exec. p. Ronald Liliie p. William Johnston assoc. rented. The rodeo, a proven route to sport through our own visceral responses. p. Ira Levy, Henry Storgaard d. William Johnston, bravery and manliness, is dangerous (and For example, we come away from the Ira Levy d.o.p. Peter Williamson ed. Judy Kru- pointless?) as we watch a mean steer film with a strong sense of the intense panszky narrator R.H. Thomson story consul­ trample a thrown cowboy. involvement between athlete and tant A narr. Peter Blow assoc. ed. Cathy Gullun sd. rec. Peter Sawade, Steve Joles, Dan Lalour, JR. If Indians become braves this way coach ; Baumann with Jeno Tihanyi, Franks cam. assts. Robin Miller, Brad Shield, now, at least before the white man they Davis with CUfford Barry. But, as I recall, Malcolm Cross sd. ed. Peter Thillaye, ismm., proved themselves by killing buffalo at no time in the film is this relationship colour, 50 minutes, 1983. p.c. Lauren Productions, 56 Shaftesbury Ave., Toronto, Ont.

May1983-CinemaCanada/45